As someone who was a trader on a derivatives prop desk I would suggest those interested in finance with solid coding skills skip being a 20-year old's peon and:

(1) Join a quant fund, e.g. Renaissance, Two Sigma, Citadel, etc., or,

(2) Join a finance tech start-up, e.g. Palantir, Addepar, SecondMarket, Wealthfront, etc. who are liable to turn the industry over in the near future

Both options require you be more than a "developer" (in the Wall St sense). Coding is a means by which to express your edge in data analysis and algorithmics. A coder who knows some finance is a "dev". A dev who knows statistical methods is a "quant". A quant who can engineer new trades is a Master of the Universe (and one to put the phone monkeys to shame at that).

Note about the course books: this explains a lot about our devs. They have you implement VaR and other theoretically sophisticated programmes while giving a ram-jet flyover of finance that would leave you helpless with more the intricate articles in The Economist; it's the equivalent of learning CS theory with no coding experience or math through memorisation.

Note about note: I'm not criticising the course per se. It does a fine job of preparing a CS student for being a developer on Wall St. I'm targeting this more to the HN community, who I feel would be wasted talent in that role.